Dispositivo Teltónika

My intention in the preceding paragraphs on ANT has been to show the inter-connectedness of

subjects and objects as a nexus from which individuals cannot extricate themselves. Agency

produces a social or material object and which has an effect on the agency and subjectivity of

others. Latour (2005) maintains that sociological theory is an example of this interplay between

the subject (as theorist or researcher) and her/his social and material world – that is to say, its

subjective problematisation, categorisation and interpretation by the sociologist. Hence Latour

stresses that ‘(t)he task of defining and ordering the social should be left to the actors themselves,

not taken up by the analyst’ (2005:22). Elsewhere he says:

. . . if there is one thing you cannot do in the actor’s stead it is to decide where

they stand on a scale going from small to big, because at every turn of their many

humanity, France, capitalism, and reason while, a minute later, they might settle

for a local compromise. Faced with such sudden shifts in scale, the only possible

solution is to take the shifting itself as . . . data and to see through which practical

means ‘absolute measure’ is made to spread.

(Latour, 2005:184)

Implicit in Latour’s thoughts are ideas about the actor/agent as both constructed and

constructive, as interacting with and interpreting the world to bring order into her/his world and

to justify her/his action. This idea is also supported by, for example, Potter and Wetherell

(1987:18) who maintain that individuals are continually striving to make sense of what is going on

around and within them. In a similar vein, Bruner (1990:107), taking a constructivist view,

maintains that the ‘self’ is the result of ‘participations’. By this he means that the ‘self’ is formed

and continues its ongoing formation through its engagement with the external world composed

of other people and their inter-relatedness (‘intersubjectivity’ Crossley, 1996) in social

interactions, relations and practices.

The notion of ‘participations’ provides an important connection throughout this section on

theorising the subject as agent and the external social and material world. I argue that, just as the

subject is the result of participations, then so too are the networks the result of participations by

subjects. These participations create social and material objects perceived to be external by the

subject. To state the obvious then, without human participation and perception networks would

not exist and change.

At this point, I part company with Latour because, somewhat unhelpfully, he appears to use the

words actor and agent interchangeably and ambiguously (see for example 2005:52, 53, 56, 57, 58,

70), sometimes apparently referring to material objects and at others to people, at still others the

to order the world or to justify their ‘behaviour’ excepting that the ordering and justification have

first been instigated by deliberate or accidental human agency. My use of the words ‘agent’ and

‘agency’ will therefore refer only to human agents for the clarity and consistency of this thesis.

In these paragraphs, then, I am proposing that the subject as agent is knowledgeable and

autonomous but that knowledge and autonomy are conditioned and constrained by her/his

understanding of the networks which s/he perceives and endows with meaning (after Bruner

1991). One cannot gain knowledge except from one’s experience; one can apply one’s knowledge

only to one’s situation, and one can act only according to one’s situation. Agency and subjectivity

are therefore socially constructed: individuals exercise agency and experience subjectivity with

reference to their knowledge of the parameters or permissiveness of the networks within which

they operate.

Therefore, for the purposes of this work, I interpret the subject’s encounters with social and

material objects as processual and perceptual in the creation of the self or the subject. Because

these encounters with social and material objects are continual, so is the creation of subjective

meaning and the self is therefore in a constant state of creation and ‘becoming’ (Weedon, 1987).

Evidence of subjectivity can be found in these pages through, for example, aspects of the

participants’ words, the theorists’ choice, problematisation, interpretation and theorising about

social reality and, equally, through my choice, interpretation and explanation of both of the

above.

There are further dimensions to this discussion of the social construction of agency that are worth

noting as they offer an enhanced way of examining my data. I have already indicated that time

and space are important stabilising features of networks where the subject exists in socially

mediated time and space. Through their stabilising, mediation between subjects, time and space,

socially constructed and socially constructive and provide parameters for existence and action.

Thus, as with McGregor’s (2004b) science department, the TAs in my research exist in the socially

constructed and constructive time and space of schools. Simultaneously the same people also

exist in the socially constructed and constructive time and space networks of the ‘education

system’, the economy, the political system, their families, their ‘communities’. Because these

networks are social constructions they are all fluid, contingent and subject to change as a result of

agency and occupy different spaces, following different time trajectories. Logically, therefore, the

social only exists and develops within and because of constant, perpetual human thought and

(inter)action, or as Latour has it, agency involves ‘repairing (the) constantly decaying ‘social

structure’’ (2005:69 – 70).

It may therefore facilitate my argument to postulate that, whilst my data involves texts about

social situations relating to TAs ‘captured’ at particular points in time, these texts are

simultaneously temporally (historicised as well as future-postulative) and spatially (re)constructed

and (re)constructive. Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) and Bruner’s (1990, 1991, in Bakhurst and

Sypnowich 1995) insights into meaning making from the subject’s perspective also imply the

subject’s ‘search’ for self-(re)location within these and other networks which are also equally

temporally, spatially and socially (re)constructed and (re)constructive. The further implication of

this is that the subject’s perception of this world provides both the discursive context within

which the subject exists as agent as well as discursive resources (‘members’ resources’ = MR,

Fairclough, 2001) upon which the subject draws in order to make sense of the world to

her/himself and to others: all of which relate back to Latour’s (2005:184) ideas on the

mobilisation of resources potentially across the widest scale of the social and range of the

The trend of the discussion so far has been to put forward ideas on the social construction of

subjectivity as the drawing of meaning from the social and material world. The postulation is that

subject’s action/agency will be conditioned by her/his subjective meaning making. The question

is: what characteristics might agency have? Bearing in mind my earlier caveat concerning Latour’s

(2005) ascription of agency to material objects and thus limiting my tentative definition of an

agent to human beings only, Latour (2005) nevertheless proffers some characteristics of agency

that serve the purposes of my thesis, marrying with my proposal of a coherent external world

stabilised through agents’ assemblages of social and material resources, and with my

understanding of constructive and constructed subjectivity.

Running through Latour’s (2005) characteristics of agency is the idea of ‘getting things done’

through the effective mobilisation of social and material resources to ‘modify a state of affairs’

(2005:70). To illustrate Latour’s (2005:52) first characteristic of agency as ‘doing’ I draw on such

aspects of agency as the production, mediation and dissemination of documents, teaching

children, and participating in meetings to plan or evaluate teaching and learning. Within each of

these activities, agents are involved in the mobilisation of material and human resources for

purposes particular to each situation. The different agents involved in these activities are

positioned in relation to each other and to the material resources. Paechter (2004b:468),

commenting on Allen (2003), makes the point that power becomes visible as a result of the

effects of such mobilisations of human and material resources - i.e. in its effects as stabilising or

transforming the social.

Latour’s (2005:53) second feature of agency is its identifiability by research participants: Latour

(2005) calls identifiable agency ‘figuration’. Under this characteristic an identifiable agent may be

an individual, a group of individuals or a combination of individuals and material objects identified

‘performative’ agency (2005:56) as agency caused by or in reaction to others’ identified agency.

The identification of figurations of the agency of others may include (de)legitimation of that

agency, criticism or support. The proposal of theories of action/agency by subjects (2005:57) in

response to figurations of agency or in explanation of the subject’s own performative agency links

Latour’s ideas on agency to reflexive and reflective subjectivity as developing through

engagement with the networks as discussed above.

Finally, Latour (2005:58) embeds agency within his theorisation of actor-networks through agents

as ‘concatenations of mediators’, thereby allowing for links between agents. However, he is

careful to define his use of the word ‘mediator’ in contrast with his definition of ‘intermediary’.

By intermediary Latour (2005:57) means an agent who is part of a chain of cause and effect where

the ‘input’ by and through the intermediary determines the ‘outcome’. A mediator, in contrast,

(2005:58) is not deterministic. Mediation therefore gives opportunities for unexpected

consequences from ‘inputs’ the agents’ use of their own theories of action. According to Latour,

mediating agents offer ‘occasions, circumstances and precedents’ (2005:58). Mediation therefore

links to my proposition of subjects as agents as knowledgeable and autonomous within the

parameters and permissiveness of the networks. The act of mediation provides a further

resource on which agents can draw and deploy in their engagement with the social and material

world.

That individuals reveal their perceptions of their world through language has been left largely

implicit and taken for granted throughout this discussion of meaning making, subjectivity and

agency. Potter and Wetherell (1987), Bruner (1990, 1991) and Fairclough (2001) offer language

as the main means by which individuals make sense of their world and find their way through it:

language is thus a mediatory tool. Linking this to Latour’s ideas on actor-networks and my

justifying one’s actions, interacting with other people, self-reflection, and mediation are all

instances among a myriad of others where the use of language is central to the mobilisation of

resources for both agentic and subjective purposes.